A DAY IN AN OLD ORCHARD. 
Blessed indeed the members of that family whose 
house, whether cottage or mansion, stands near an old 
orchard. They will have beauty, fragrance, fruit, shel- 
ter and shade; visitants too, rare and enjoyable, from 
fields and woods. These old apple trees, emblems of 
civilization and symbols of man’s industry and home 
comforts, bring much more than fruit to the premises. 
They bring the bright-winged insects and the singing 
birds, the squirrels and the mice—inhabitants of the 
hives, the fields and the woods. They bring children, 
too, to love them and to be blessed by them, to hunt 
birds’ nests in the branches and build play-houses in their 
shade, to trample the grass and club the early fruit. 
It is not the modern young orchard with branches 
trimmed and thinned, with the ground kept clear of 
grass and turf, that best we love. However thrifty and 
full of promise this young and cultivated orchard may 
be, like a new house, it lacks the great charm which 
only time can give. It is the orchard, rather, with its 
mossy trunks and gnarled and scraggy limbs, with foli- 
age so dense that in many places it has driven out the 
meadow grass and restored some of the wild things of 
the primitive woods. 
